


through fresh eyes

by checkmate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, bruce banner thinks they're cute, i wrote this at 3am, set immediately after the avengers/battle of new york, that's it that's the whole fic, tony stark needs reading glasses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkmate/pseuds/checkmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What?” Tony asks defensively.</p><p>Bruce shrugs, straightens up. “Nothing. I just didn’t realise you wore reading glasses.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	through fresh eyes

When Tony looks up and sees Bruce standing in the door of the lab, leaning casually against the frame, he realises he has no idea how long the man has been standing there. It’s the middle of the night, or early morning really, or—Tony glances to the window and sees the sun is starting to rise. Not so early morning, then. He loses track of time easily when he’s working, but he cant believe its already dawn. “Hey.” He says with a quick _I see you there_ nod, and carries on working. His eyes can only stay on his blueprints for about thirty seconds however before they flick up to the door again, conscious that Bruce hasn’t moved from his position. “You can come in, you know.” Tony adds, frowning slightly. “No need to stand on ceremony.”

Bruce drops his folded arms to his side and steps further into the lab/workshop/man-cave, depending on who you ask, walks over to the bench where Tony is spread out among stacks of design sketches. A few of them are suit upgrades, for him and the rest of the team, but the majority of them are renovations to his penthouse. He should have guessed, really, that the only thing that would make Pepper agree to some home improvements was total and utter destruction at the hands of an Asgardian demi-god and an alien invasion. Because this is his life now—total and utter chaos.

Bruce takes a look at the papers over his shoulder, not commenting on anything in particular as he gently flicked through the pages. A tiny smile spreads over his face as Tony looks up at him, a tiny smile that Tony isn’t quite sure how to interpret. Despite his best efforts (and by that, he did in fact mean hacking SHIELD and attempting to interrogate Romanoff), he can’t figure Bruce Banner out. No matter how convinced Tony is that he’s going to zig, Banner always zags, without exception. “What?” He asks defensively, resisting the childish urge to cover as many pages as he could, to protest they weren’t quite finished yet, that he could do better.

Bruce shrugs, straightens up. “Nothing. I just didn’t realise you wore reading glasses.”

Tony’s hands fly up to the narrow metal framed glasses perched on his nose and yanks them off immediately, a blush rising in his cheeks. “I wear glasses all the time.” He says, attempting to cover even though his brain seems to be lagging a good five seconds behind his hands.

“You wear those ridiculous coloured sunglasses all the time.” Bruce corrects. “Tony, don’t take them off on my account. There’s nothing wrong with them. I was just surprised, that’s all. God knows my eyes are a damn sight worse than yours are. Besides, they suit you.”

Tony laughs despite himself, holding the ugly wire glasses up to the light. “I was working on a project with Pepper in the penthouse the night Phil showed up, and I left my _expensive, designer, not hideous_ reading glasses on the coffee table.” He explains with all the required emphasis to drive home the point that he would never be seen dead in these awful things out of choice. He puts his pencil down; he’s not working on anything important anyway, more of a distraction than any real productivity, and this is the most relaxed Bruce has been with him since the lab on the helicarrier. “The coffee table and all of its contents ended up somewhere on the streets of New York fifty floors below.”

“And buying new glasses hasn’t been your first priority?” Bruce teases, sitting casually on the edge of the work bench. Tony looks around for another chair but there isn’t one. It’s rare that there are visitors in the lab, and Tony’s not in the habit of providing home comforts for them on the off chance someone shows up.

He makes a mental note to change that, since he has a feeling he might be seeing more of Bruce up here in the coming weeks. At least, he hopes he will.

“Not even I’m that shallow.” Tony replies, only half joking. “Normally I’d use contacts but—”

He trails off, but Bruce stares him down, sympathy in his face. Tony knows Bruce knows how that sentence would have ended. He’s too tired, eyes sore and strained and itching even before he tries sticking anything else in them.

 “I wasn’t just being kind when I said they suited you.” Bruce says, breaking the awkward pause between them.

Tony scoffs, but puts them back on, revelling in the page becoming legible once again. Eyesight versus looking like a dick. “I look like a middle school principal.”

“A cute middle school principal.” Bruce counters.

Tony raises an eyebrow, turning to Bruce with a smirk. “Cute?” He repeats, trying to trip the man up, embarrass him maybe. From the helicarrier, Tony noted it didn’t take much to make the scientist blush—a word of praise here, a brush on the arm there—but he didn’t seem flustered now.

“Cute.” Bruce confirms, toying with a corner of a page absently. It’s a stack of sheets for Natasha, a new fibre he’s been working on that in a suit should give her way more freedom of movement in the field. It needs tweaking still, but it’s coming along. He watches Bruce scan over it, wonders if he’s going to put that big, biological brain of his to it and feed him some new ideas, but he doesn’t comment. “I kind of assumed you would be used to that sort of reaction, you know. I mean, from your reputation. I didn’t expect Tony Stark to be a guy who _blushed_ at being told he’s cute.”

“I’m not blushing!” Tony says immediately. He is. He definitely is. Of all the things he expected to come out of this morning, Bruce Banner calling him cute isn’t one of them. “Besides, a cute middle school principal is still a middle school principal, Banner.”

“They make you look… distinguished. I like it.”

Tony isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he just doesn’t. Bruce is unaffected by the silence however, totally undeterred by the air between them being filled only by the scratch of pencil on paper. “Did you need something?” Tony asks eventually. “Or did you just come up here to stroke my ego?”

Bruce shrugs, looking a little embarrassed for the first time this morning. “I just thought you’d been up here a while. Figured I’d remind you that sleep is good too sometimes.”

“Right.” Tony says, but doesn’t make any move to get up, to head back downstairs to his new temporary room. Bruce leaves after a few minutes, maybe half an hour, Tony isn’t really paying attention. It’s a few hours after that when Tony finally falls asleep right at his desk, his glasses smushed against his face. When he wakes fifteen hours later, he’s in his own bed (Tony suspects Steve’s handiwork) and the glasses are folded neatly on his bedside table, right next to a box of his contact lenses.

Tony laughs to himself, skips over the little plastic container, then lets his nose lead him to the kitchen, where Thor is attempting to recreate something from the banquet halls of Asgard with the meagre Midgardian supplies of Tony’s kitchen. They leave him to it for an hour before giving up and trying to find a take out place that survived the battle—Natasha shoots down his suggestion of more shawarma immediately—and when he puts his glasses on to scan over the menu for a pizza joint, he ignores Clint’s barely stifled snort of laughter and looks over at Bruce with a smile instead.

 


End file.
